The PM fears Syria might yet become another Kosovo

Wednesday 8 February 2012 11:45 BST

Civil warfare: a funeral procession in Homs, Syria, currently under bombardment by the Assad regime

At yesterday's meeting of the National Security Council, the Prime Minister and his colleagues acknowledged both the geopolitical complexity and the humanitarian simplicity of the escalating Syrian crisis. There is no taste whatsoever for military intervention by the West. For now, the Arab League is in the lead, pressing President Bashar al-Assad to yield power to Vice-President Farouk al-Shara, so that he in turn may form a unity government. For now, Western support is likely to be channelled through an Arab-led "Friends of Syria" group.

In the Commons on Monday, William Hague set out a seven-point UK strategy, ranging from assistance to the Syrian opposition ("there is no limit on what resources we can provide") to fresh European Union sanctions upon the Assad regime. This is the strategy that informed the NSC's deliberations yesterday, and, while robustly expressed, the Hague plan is conspicuously clear in the limits it sets upon British action.

Yet the necessary pragmatism of the NSC's discussion was tempered by horror at the bloodshed in Homs, Syria's third-largest city, under siege from the Assad regime. Bombardment by artillery and land-to-air missiles is taking a terrible toll upon its citizens - at least 14 of whom were slaughtered yesterday, including a couple and three of their children.

According to one senior source, the PM and his security council colleagues shared a "great consciousness that we don't want Homs to become a Middle Eastern Sarajevo". One of David Cameron's greatest achievements to date was something that did not happen: namely, Colonel Gaddafi's threatened slaughter in Benghazi last March, a systematic atrocity that was averted only by the determination of the Prime Minister and M Sarkozy. But what if the thwarted horrors of Benghazi are made real 11 months later in Homs?

It is axiomatic to Mr Cameron's foreign policy that there are no templates - no "neo-con" blueprints or doctrinal maps. Partly, this is a reflection of the obvious: the situation in Syria is patently very different from the fall of Gaddafi, just as the Libyan end-game was anything but a replay of the liberation of Iraq.

What is true - a rather different point - is that the Prime Minister is learning lessons and refining the practice and processes of intervention along the way. In contrast to the debacle at the UN Security Council over Iraq on the very eve of war, the Libyan no-fly-zone was unambiguously endorsed by Resolution 1973. In response to the traumas that followed Saddam's defeat, a Stabilisation Response Team for Libya was established pre-emptively to expedite the issues of reconstruction that were bound to arise once Gaddafi had fallen.

Liaison with the National Transitional Council was also at the heart of the whole enterprise. From the Libyan experience, in turn, much has been deduced about how to negotiate with and assist a regime-in-waiting - in this case, the Syrian National Council, presently based in Turkey. The SNC is, to put it mildly, an unstable grouping, spatchcocked together by the urgency of the situation but nowhere near ready for the daunting task ahead. A related question is how far and in what form the West assists the Free Syrian Army, the military alliance of defectors which represents the rebels' muscle. The phrase coined by former Foreign Secretary Douglas Hurd to defend the ban on supplying weapons to Bosnia -"level killing field" - echoes through the years. Yet a "level killing field" is usually better than a one-sided slaughter.

For what it's worth, Mr Cameron's security team is pleased thus far by the leadership shown by the Arab League. At a higher level, however, multilateralism is failing the Syrian people disgracefully. Russia's deployment of its veto at the UN on Saturday - in league with China - sets pitiful constraints upon what that international talking shop can do to resolve this particular crisis. The furious response of the Obama administration captured exquisitely what happens when believers in global liberal institutions are mugged by reality. The American Ambassador to the UN declared herself "disgusted", while Hillary Clinton, the US Secretary of State, went even further. "Faced with a neutered Security Council," she said, "we have to redouble our efforts outside of the United Nations with those allies and partners who support the Syrian people's right to have a better future." Let's not forget: it was Mrs Clinton's husband who took action in Kosovo without direct UN authorisation.

Like our own Coalition, the White House has been at pains to emphasise that the President is not considering military intervention in Syria, or even the arming of the rebels. But, crucially, the Obama administration has at last lost its sophomoric illusions about the UN.

This matters enormously because what is happening in Syria is very much more than a civil war. The Assad regime is a close ally of Iran and of Hezbollah in Lebanon. Israel watches this conflict, therefore, as a proxy for its own forthcoming battles with Tehran over the mullahs' nuclear ambitions. If Russia can bring the multilateral machinery of the UN grinding to a halt so easily (many in Israel reason), then why bother with the pointless theatrics of endlessly redrafted resolutions and vexatious vetoes?

It is widely believed in Washington that a unilateral Israeli strike on Iranian nuclear targets is only weeks away. What is certain is this: if the international community fails to resolve the Assad crisis quickly, Israel will draw its own bleak conclusions about how best to thwart Iran's nuclear ambitions.

In Syria, it is too early to talk about militarily enforced "no-fly zones", "safe havens" or "humanitarian corridors". But it is also too early to dismiss them. On Newsnight last night, Lord Owen, another former Foreign Secretary, acknowledged the severe constraints upon the West and its regional allies but added a caveat, as simple as it was wise: "Never rule out the use of force when you're dealing with brutal, savage people." So much is at stake in this conflict.